


The Ghost of Christmas Future

by LizEBoredom



Series: Christmas Ghost Stories 2018 [3]
Category: The Elementalists (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff, Future, Gen, Horror, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-10-10 02:39:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17417465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizEBoredom/pseuds/LizEBoredom
Summary: The Pend Pals are discovering all kinds of non-magickal Christmas traditions, including one involving ghost stories. They learn a valuable lesson in what happens when you go looking for ghosts.





	The Ghost of Christmas Future

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: There is an old tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas time. The most well-known of these has become Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. In that spirit, I present this series of Choices characters telling ghost stories at Christmas. Thanks to BoneandFur for the use of Rayvynne!
> 
> Disclaimer: Characters belong to Pixelberry. I’m just borrowing them.

“So Minah, what did you have in mind for us tonight?”

Zeph was looking around the Roost at the decorations Minah and Shreya had set up earlier that day. The Pend Pals were having an official evening in, no studying allowed, no talk of Thief or potions or shadow monsters or Minah’s weird twin.

“We’re going to have a Christmas party! Like old Fezziwig in  _A Christmas Carol_!”

“I’m not familiar with that particular grouping of words,” countered Beckett. “What is a  _Fezziwig_?”

“Are you serious? You don’t know A Christmas Carol?”

A look around the group told her that was indeed the case. She was surrounded by people who didn’t know Dickens.

“So what is it?” asked Griffin.

“Only one of the greatest ghost stories ever told! We’re watching it during this party.”

“I don’t understand. Why would you watch a ghost story at Christmas? Aren’t you supposed to do that on Halloween?”

“Zeph,  _all_  the best Christmas movies have ghosts! A Christmas Carol, Scrooged, Black Adder’s Christmas Carol, the Muppets Christmas Carol…Hmm. I guess they’re all just different versions of the same story. Oh! It’s a Wonderful Life! Although, I  _guess_  Clarence was more of an angel than a ghost… Anyway, just… trust me on this. It’s the greatest Christmas story ever!”

Minah was excited to share her favorite movie with her new friends, and was even more excited about the fact that she finally knew something Beckett didn’t.

“Why  _ghosts_ , though?” Shreya asked. “Ghosts aren’t real.”

“Or are they?” asked Minah, a mischievous glint in her eye. “I happen to know of a  _completely true_  ghost story.”

“ _Really_ ,” asked Beckett, one perfectly groomed eyebrow raising in disbelief. “And how  _exactly_  do you know it’s completely true?”

“Because  _I was there.”_

Zeph started laughing, and the others soon followed. “Oh, that was  _good_. You really had us going for a minute there.”

Minah was shocked. How could they not believe her? She decided her new goal for the evening was to get this bunch believing in ghosts. Bonus if she was able scare them.

“Alright, apparently I need to teach you a lot more than just how to enjoy a good Christmas movie. Everyone sit. It’s story time.”

She could see from the looks on everyone’s faces that they still didn’t believe her, but at least they were willing to humor her. Everyone pulled up a seat and sat in a tight circle, Shreya and Griffin saying “ _boo_ ” to each other and breaking into laughter.

Minah rolled her eyes at them, then turned off the overhead lights, leaving them to sit in the dark lit only by the dim, colorful glow of the Christmas lights.

“Okay, so I grew up in a town called Salem. Where I’m from, there’s a  _huge_  history of witchcraft, and people used to be burned at the stake if they were suspected of practicing magick,” she began, taking note of how horrified everyone looked at the knowledge that she came from a place that didn’t celebrate magick.

“How barbaric,” Shreya whispered, before Griffin shushed her.

“So there are a lot of legends that the women and men who were killed and tortured had cursed the town. There are tales of their ghosts wandering in the night, waiting for someone to cross them in order to strike out in vengeance.

“Our elementary school sat at the top of a hill. We’d go sledding down it in the winter, when the school was closed. Anyway, the school itself was once a house, and it had belonged to a woman who’d been accused of witchcraft long after the old trials of Salem, in the days when it wasn’t socially acceptable to burn witches anymore.

“The townspeople of Salem back in the 1800s still didn’t want witches in their village, though, and would often have people committed to the huge asylum just outside town. It was  _enormous_ , practically a self-contained city, so not many people really knew about what went on there.

“Well, not until about 50 years ago, when the place was closed down for the horrifying things they were doing to the residents. Apparently, they were doing medical experiments, and had been basically torturing the inmates for hundreds of years. A lot of people went in and never came out. That’s what happened to Sarah Drew, the woman whose house had become our school.

“So one day, my friends and I got the brilliant idea that we should go visit the place and do a seance to see if we could contact Sarah.”

“What the hell made you think it was a good idea to visit a closed down asylum to  _try_  to talk to dead people?!?” Zeph asked incredulously. “Had you  _never_  watched a horror movie? How are you still alive?”

The others shushed him, encouraging Minah to continue on with the story.

“Okay, so we learned about seances from Meaghan O’Brien’s older sister Her name was Caitlin, but she made us all call her Rayvynne. She worked in an occult shop that was there mostly for the tourists, but actually was used by some of the local ‘psychics’ for seances in the back room. So she taught us all about using the Ouija board and drawing salt circles and stuff like that. So our dumb little selves thought we were prepared for what was going to happen.

“So that night, we all told our parents we were sleeping over at Meaghan’s house. Once it got dark we had Rayvynne drive us out to the old asylum. It was in worse shape than we thought it would be. The windows were busted out, the roof had caved in in a few rooms, and there was graffiti all over the walls. It looked like a tornado had blown through the place.

“We sat in one of the big rooms on the first floor that looked like it had been a common room, drew our salt circle, and pulled out our Ouija board. Rayvynne was basically acting as a lookout, just in case there was a security guard or something, but it seemed like it was just us and our flashlights.

“We lit our candles and turned off all the flashlights. It left us in almost total darkness, and it was  _really_  creepy in there. So we all put our fingers on the planchette and started calling on the ghost of Sarah Drew. When the planchette started moving across the board we all assumed it was one of us who was moving it. But eventually, the more we engaged with it, the faster and faster it started moving until it flew off the board and  _across the room_.

“Naturally, we all screamed our heads off. The next thing we knew,  _the candles blew out_. We were in the dark, in a creepy old building where people had been tortured and possibly murdered, and we’d been contacting ghosts. The stupidity of what we were doing hit us all at once. We all scrambled to get our flashlights and turn them back on.

“When the lights were relit, we figured out there was an extra person in our circle. That person was none other than  _Sarah Drew_. We all ran out of that building as fast as our legs could carry us, and Rayvynne ran every red light the whole way home. But we didn’t close the seance properly, so Sarah’s ghost is still wandering free.

“She sometimes still appears to me on dark, cold nights when the lights are dim and I’m sitting with people in a circle. In fact, she might be in this room …  _right_  …  _now_.”

As soon as she said it, she called up Tim from the Ether, willing him to appear next to Zeph in the circle. Tim let out a deep, croaking noise, causing Zeph to stand and scream.

“It’s her! It’s Sarah Drew! She’s going to get me!!”

He ran from the room, leaving chaos in his wake. Shreya was clinging to Griffin, begging him to save her. He escorted her from the room as she wailed that she was too rich to die.

Beckett was the only one left, appearing torn between running for his life and rushing to save Minah. She watched him with amusement before deciding to go easy on him.

“Thank you, Tim. You can go back to the Ether now,” she said with a grin.

Beckett’s face turned beet red, a look she always enjoyed seeing on him. She approached him with an apology, which he accepted with a grin. When his eyes fixed on a point behind her, face paling, she got concerned.

“Beckett? Are you okay?”

“Minah… you… you sent Tim back to the Ether, right? I saw you do that.”

“Yeah, of course. Why?”

“Th-then who is that woman behind you?”

“Very funny, Beckett. Har har, you’re trying to scare me and it’s not going to work.”

Still fixated on a spot behind her, he grabbed her hand. “Don’t. Turn. Around,” he hissed, backing slowly toward the door and pulling her with him.

“Don’t be ridiculous, there’s nothing behind me.”

She rolled her eyes at him and then started to turn around, catching a glimpse of a female form behind her as Beckett broke into a run, dragging her behind him. She felt every hair standing on end as her brain screamed that it couldn’t be real, that it had to be a trick of the light.

_Ghosts aren’t real_ , she reminded herself, squeezing her eyes closed as they ran.  _Ghosts aren’t real._

 


End file.
